BloodhoundBloghttp://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog
There's always something to howl aboutThu, 26 Mar 2015 17:36:14 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.62006-2007 GregSwann@BloodhoundRealty.com (BloodhoundBlog.net)GregSwann@BloodhoundRealty.com (BloodhoundBlog.net)Real estate weblog podcasts1440http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/SmallPodCastDog.jpgBloodhoundBloghttp://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog
144144BloodhoundBlog.net: National real estate marketing and technology weblog produced by, for and about real estate professionalsBloodhoundBlog.net: National real estate marketing and technology weblog produced by, for and about real estate professionalsreal,estate,marketing,investingBloodhoundBlog.netBloodhoundBlog.netGregSwann@BloodhoundRealty.comnonoMy Pettiest SM Peeveshttp://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16498/my-pettiest-sm-peeves/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16498/my-pettiest-sm-peeves/#commentsThu, 26 Mar 2015 13:59:13 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16498I’m a Chicago real estate blogger who resides in a glass house (okay, an MCM high rise) so throw ‘em if you got ‘em. A little collateral stone breakage comes with the territory in this Midwest cranny. Regardless, here are a handful of Social Media miens that tick me off on a daily basis. In no great order:

1) Stock Photo Images On A Realtor’s BlogMy take: If you’re going to offer up something to the SM gods that even faintly smells literary, have the decency (imagination?) to snap your own accompanying picture. (Unless of course, its a really cool shot of a vintage car or dog.)

2) Blogs In A BoxMy take: Come on fellow ‘bloggers,’ we all know you don’t write that crappy content about real estate minutiae that you plaster on LinkedIn and Facebook every other day. (“6 Factors Homeowners Should Consider Blah Blah Blah.” ??? Yeah right. I saw three different Realtors with their names on some re-tweaked version of that one the other day.) It’s pretty obvious you’re paying some vendor $1.26 per copy to re-brand these thinly-veiled press releases, ‘newsletters,’ and USA Today column fillers. Grow a brain, please.

3) Proprietary Use Of The Word ‘Professional’My take: At least once a month I get dissed because my shaved headed, sun shaded profile picture is ‘unprofessional.’ It’s all in the POV, folks. See, to me it looks like everybody else on LinkedIn appears to have gotten the Glamor Shots Jos. A. Bank Funeral Director Discount. If you think your shizz is so self- important then try this: unsubscribe from the SM platform for a couple days and see how much the rest of the buttoned-down world doesn’t notice.
4) Facebook Profile With Your Name But Your Child/Grandchild’s FaceMy take: Someone please explain???
5) Facebook Pages Of Dead Dudes Acting Like They’re NotMy take: Keith Moon and George Carlin immediately come to mind. No shit, Keith even wished everybody a ‘Happy Friday’ last week and he kicked it back in 1978. Look it up.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16498/my-pettiest-sm-peeves/feed/4Getting a San Diego Condo VA-Approved Adds Value To Service Membershttp://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16485/getting-a-san-diego-condo-va-approved-adds-value-to-service-members/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16485/getting-a-san-diego-condo-va-approved-adds-value-to-service-members/#commentsMon, 25 Aug 2014 20:02:08 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16485Debra Brady and I are experts at VA-financing. One of the things we do very well is secure a VA condo complex approval for condominiums which aren’t agency approved. Some comments from a recent YELP review:

I started the home buying process while still on deployment, and Brian graciously worked with me across 13 time zones to begin explaining the ins and outs of home buying.

This is actually kind of fun for me. With technology, deployed service members can communicate with me well in advance of buying. Many times, when deployed, they have free time with little to do. They use Gchat, Facebook Messenger, Skype, and email to communicate with me. Sometimes it makes for some weird hours but I enjoy finally meeting them when they return to the States.

I googled VA home approval, and his was the first name to pop up. Brian is an absolute master at working with the VA.

That’s what I love to hear–that we come up first on Google Search for this topic.

Brian took my wife and I out for cocktails to explain in person the different loan rates and explain the decision making process for each of them, and Debra worked like a fiend to make sure thinks were done WELL ahead of time.

This is how Debra and I work. I spend most of my time “selling” real estate agents and educating clients and Debra gets the loan done. When we’re clicking properly, I am “Mr. Outside” and she is “Mrs. Inside”. Clients know that she is in the office, every day from 8AM until 230PM each day and available on the telephone. This frees me up to: (a) find more business for us and (b) properly educate home buyers about the process. We pride ourselves on “no surprises” during the loan process.

To any Servicemembers who are interested in using their VA loan option, look no further than Brian, he is THE expert who will get you into the place you want.

That’s what I hope to hear on every VA loan we close. It doesn’t ALWAYS happen but, I’m proud to say, it does happen more often than not.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16485/getting-a-san-diego-condo-va-approved-adds-value-to-service-members/feed/0How Not to Messagehttp://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16482/how-not-to-message/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16482/how-not-to-message/#commentsMon, 28 Jul 2014 17:44:30 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16482Taking this moment to give this brief lesson on how not to message:

Neil Siegel, a former special counsel to Joe Biden and supporter of ObamaCare/Affordable Care Act, was on WUNC’s The State of Things on Wednesday discussing recent appellate litigation involving the subsidies authorized by the Act. The DC Circuit ruled Monday that subsidies are illegal in states that did not set up their own insurance exchanges. North Carolina is one of those states. The Fourth Circuit, in which North Carolina is located, found otherwise.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16482/how-not-to-message/feed/0Passed my Check Ridehttp://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16476/passed-my-check-ride/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16476/passed-my-check-ride/#commentsMon, 30 Jun 2014 22:32:42 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16476Back in January, I wrote here about taking private pilot lessons. My post was inspired by one Greg wrote in December about mastering something difficult this year. Earlier this month I took an oral exam and then check ride with an designated examiner for the FAA, and I passed!

The next day, I piled my wife and a little bit of luggage into my Piper Cherokee, and took off for the coast. An hour and 15 minutes later, I was down at Ocracoke, part of the Outer Banks that would ordinarily take someone 6 hours or so to get to by car from Raleigh.

My wife and I got a lift to the local pub – really, the only one worth considering on Ocracoke – where I ordered a non-alcohol beverage and we got some shrimp and burgers, before flying south/southeast along the coast to Beaufort, North Carolina.

It was a ton of fun.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16476/passed-my-check-ride/feed/3The Real Housewives of Redfinhttp://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16443/the-real-housewives-of-redfin/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16443/the-real-housewives-of-redfin/#commentsFri, 14 Mar 2014 03:12:55 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16443“Couldn’t you, just once, tell somebody what they really want to hear?” my wife asked, almost immediately after I got off the phone with the Redfin recruiter.

“Is that a rhetorical question? You just asked me a rhetorical question!” I snapped. Ever since I turned fifty-five I get snappy when someone I love questions my intentions, especially when I’m hungry.

She didn’t answer but instead, continued her Words With Friends game on her iPad. I walked into the kitchen.

“They’ll call me back,” I said after a few moments of silence, my fat head deep into the refrigerator looking for just one thing to shove into my mouth that didn’t have soy as its main ingredient; something with a little gluten, perhaps. Is this too much to ask?

“No they won’t,” she countered from the other room. “You just used the F word during a job interview.”

“No I didn’t.”

“Yes you did. I heard you.”

I walked over to the sofa with some type of pickled vegetable wrapped in a grape leaf. My wife did not look up from her backlit screen.

“Does Xerox really have two x’s in it? Is that even a real word?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said, now a little stunned by what might have just happened on the phone; not sure of anything at that moment. Appetite quickly waning.

“Two x’s? I don’t think so. Well, maybe…And it wasn’t really a job interview. It was only an initial phone call. Introductory.” No longer hungry at all, I tossed the unsavory snack into the waiting mouth of our slobbering dog who, in turn, spit it immediately onto the floor.

“Hmm,” my wife said to nothing in particular, or perhaps, to everything in general.

——

That was six months ago, and although the names and details are a bit blurry now, the gist of the episode remains clear.

It all began with a conversation I had earlier that same week with a fellow Realtor—-an old-schooler, like me. We were seated at our favorite Starbucks window bar nursing triple espressos when he mentioned a new type of Redfin partnership program that offered leads to selected non-Redfin Chicago brokers. You just had to pay a referral fee at closing with no other upfront costs. He pointed out two young women with strollers who were enjoying mommy-time with their toddlers out on the patio.

“Both of them are Redfin partners who work part-time in my office,” he said. “Pretty sure one of them doesn’t even know how to spell condominium and she already has three deals this month. I think the other skinnier one is a yoga instructor for her real job.”

“A yoga instructor?”

“I think so,” he said. “She’s always wearing yoga pants. At the very least that makes her a housewife. Either way, they both drive nicer cars than me.”

“If this Redfin thing is such a good deal, why don’t you sign up for it?” I asked.

“I hate this business too much already,” he said. “What I don’t need is a flock of twenty-somethings texting me every time they log on to Trulia and get a real estate stiffy.”

While my buddy, clearly, was too jaded for the job, I somehow felt that I wasn’t. With fifteen years experience, I figured I was a slam dunk partnership candidate; just what the Redfin folks might be looking for—a full-time, condo slinging, non-yoga instructing, ass-kicking, downtown Chicago real estate professional. And besides, business was slow and I could use a little boost. A slow drip of fresh blood would blend nicely into my current marketing mix; a few extra ‘my watch cost more than your car‘ condo buyers here, a couple ‘coffee is for closers’ listing appointments there. A steady stream of new prospects could keep me in the real estate game until retirement. All I needed were the good leads. The Glengarry leads. You know, the ones Mitch and Murray send in from downtown…

So I Googled Redfin, found the program, applied on-line, did the tutorial, attended the interactive webinar (even kept my mouth shut), and scheduled my initial phone interview which, true to form, I forgot to enter into my calendar and promptly forgot about.

A couple days later, my phone rang at an inopportune time–as it always does, the screen flashing a familiar Seattle area code. I was certain it was that Dave character from Zillow’s advertising department who had been calling every month for three years trying to get me to pay him for posting my listings on his real estate site. Go figure. Anyway, when I answered the call I was ready to let poor Dave from Seattle have it, right between the zillows.

“Hi GG! Sky from Redfin here! Can you talk?!”

“Who?”

“Sky (or maybe it was Sea) from Redfin! We have your interview scheduled for 2 p.m. Pacific!”

“Oh yes Sky. Of course (??)”

“Cool. GG. Let’s do this! What made you want to become a Realtor?!?!?”

“…”

It was such a stupid question I honestly don’t remember what I told him. Truth is, seven years ago I wouldn’t have even considered such an arrangement. Everybody and his gardener had a real estate license back then but we were all stacking paper. My biggest professional worry in those days was which Rolex to buy next and how to keep the nicks and parallel parking scratches off the bumpers of my big body Benz.

“What are your best qualities as a Realtor, GG? What makes you outstanding?”

Or something along those lines. And to be fair, there was an echo on the phone connection so maybe I was imagining the GG part. Maybe I was just in one of my snappy ‘Meano Geno’ moods that day. (Another Realtor actually called me that once, right before hanging up on me. “Meano Geno!” Click.) Anyway, like I said, this all went down six months ago. And I’m getting old.

“What I’m really good at, Sky, is negotiation. I’m really good at getting the other side to cave-in, thus procuring the best possible deal for my client.”

“Cave in?”

“Yeah. Cave in. You know, win,” I said.

“Win/Win, you mean?” he asked.

“Yeah, I guess. Win/Win. Sure. Why not.”

“Okay, cool,” he said. “Now, what do you think makes you exceptional as a real estate agent?”

“I don’t know, Sky. I suppose the fact that I’ve negotiated over three hundred deals and more than a hundred million in transactions in my career. Something along those lines. What do you think?”

“Coool. And how do you envision the Redfin Partner Program fitting into your current business model?”

“Come on man. What kind of questions are these? You send me the leads. I get them to buy something they like. Get them a good deal. Everybody’s happy. It’s pretty simple. Just keep me on the North Side. No foreclosures. No suburbs. No ghettos.”

“Okaayyy…..What was the biggest obstacle you’ve ever had to overcome as a Realtor?” he asked.

“You’re f*king kidding me, right Sky?” I replied…

Anyway, it was about two seconds after that when my wife asked me the rhetorical question. A week later I received the following email:

To: Geno PetroSubject: Redfin’s Partner Program

Hello G,

Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider you for the Redfin Partner Program and taking the time to speak with us. While we are impressed with your success as an agent, after careful consideration we have decided to pursue other candidates in your market at this time. We will maintain your application in our active files and contact you if there is an opportunity for a future partnership.

We do wish you continued success in your real estate business. Thank you again for your time!

——

To be honest, I forgot all about this nonsense until a Redfin ‘Partner’ called on one of my listings last week, requesting a 7 p.m. showing on a Friday night. After bitching about the time (and weather) for thirty seconds, I finally agreed. And even though I’m apparently not qualified to have her job (but am somehow qualified to show her one of my properties on a Friday night in the middle of a week-long ice storm), she sounded very nice. Like someone’s wife.

So she shows up thirty minutes late with her three-year old daughter and a 2014 Infiniti QX60 full of Millennials. Everyone was holding Starbucks cups and wearing North Face and UGGS.

“No,” I reply, as I watch them slosh, one by one, across the family room carpet, “I just like wearing the pants.”

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16443/the-real-housewives-of-redfin/feed/23Hey, @Zillow: Why are you calling the Realtors and lenders you prey upon #racist?http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16414/hey-zillow-why-are-you-calling-the-realtors-and-lenders-you-prey-upon-racist/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16414/hey-zillow-why-are-you-calling-the-realtors-and-lenders-you-prey-upon-racist/#commentsSat, 18 Jan 2014 17:22:19 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16414And why on earth do they continue to do business with you?
]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16414/hey-zillow-why-are-you-calling-the-realtors-and-lenders-you-prey-upon-racist/feed/9Flourishing, Flying, and the FAAhttp://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16411/flourishing-flying-and-the-faa/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16411/flourishing-flying-and-the-faa/#commentsWed, 08 Jan 2014 18:52:43 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16411Greg has a nice post on mastering something difficult this year. I’m not sure it counts as a truly difficult task, but I started taking private pilot lessons in August, and was hooked. It turns out that flying in a small plane is fun, especially when you can fly most places you want with comparatively little hassle.

In October, I bought an airplane – a Piper Cherokee 140 that was built in the 1960s, and refurbished in the 2000s with new avionics and electronics.

It’s not particularly speedy. It flies about 130 to 140 mph in calm weather. With a headwind, you’ll get no better speed than a fast car, though you do always have the advantage of flying directly from point to point and avoiding traffic.

There are two aspects of flying. There is the purely intellectual and mechanical task of operating the plane, and of inspecting it and fixing it (which I’m looking forward to learning.) That is exciting. I started landing the plane well, consistently, last week. Something just clicked and I’ve got a good sense now of how to fly the plane to a stop.

I’m also excited about mapping routes, avoiding hazards, making sure the plane is operating safely.

What is a terrible bore is that flying has got to be one of the most regulated ways to travel. I am able to avoid most of the TSA because I can walk right out to the plane on the ramp.

But everything is highly regulated, from the actual certification of the plane and all repairs, additions, improvements and modifications, to restrictions on where you can travel, to licensing restrictions.

I am going to have to take my private pilot check ride, which is a ride with an FAA examiner to make sure I can operate the plane safely and perform certain maneuvers. I’m not too worried about that.

But I also have to read, memorize, and regurgitate on a multiple choice exam a ton of useless factoids about aviation regulations that are irrelevant to safety or to proficient flying.

So much of our life is regulated – from the fishing license, to the boating certificate, to the pilot’s license, to the driver’s license, to the license to start this or that business. It’s a wonder you don’t need a license from the government to launch a new website.

That is so very sad.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16411/flourishing-flying-and-the-faa/feed/5Want to be a better, more-perfect version of yourself? Master something difficult this year.http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16409/want-to-be-a-better-more-perfect-version-of-yourself-master-something-difficult-this-year/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16409/want-to-be-a-better-more-perfect-version-of-yourself-master-something-difficult-this-year/#commentsTue, 31 Dec 2013 17:00:37 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16409

You weren’t just cheated of an education when you were young, you were cheated out of the full awareness of your own humanity.Mait Jüriado / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

I always love to read about the outrageously nefarious bad guys who are doing all the things we hate. Doesn’t matter who “we” are, since the bad guys afflicting every “we” are always blindingly brilliant, amazingly competent masterminds of evil.

I guess it’s useful to exaggerate your opposition, but here’s the thing:

Everyone I remember from school was a fuck-up.

Start with a good solid two-thirds compliant drones, dutifully going through whatever motions seemed to be required. Maybe half of the rest were glib and lazy. Even the straight-A apple-polishers were just phoning it in, doing the minimum necessary to get the grade from the glib-and-lazy grown-up teaching the class.

Am I misrepresenting the world of education? Is there anything you can think of that you did in school that you’re truly proud of now. Away from athletics or the school play, was there anything in your academic life that you gave everything you had? Was there anyone else who did that?

Was there any class that you took — ever — where you had to bust ass every day or risk get hopelessly lost? And when you got to that class, was that the end of your forward progress in that discipline?

The kids from the hard side of the quad — the maths, the sciences — know what I’m talking about. The kids from the soft side of the quad — the arts, the social sciences — may be recalling a graceless exit from the maths and sciences.

But the truth is that virtually all of us were denied the kind of education that was a matter of expected routine for our grandparents. Partly this is our fault: Too often we were grade-greedy glib-and-lazy fuck-ups. But mostly it was the fault of our teachers — and their teachers.

Were they outrageously nefarious bad guys, hell-bent on depriving us of a decent education? Were they blindingly brilliant, amazingly competent masterminds of evil, conspiring to enslave us in a state of perpetual, unsuspected ignorance?

No. They were just cash-greedy glib-and-lazy fuck-ups. For a second thing, teachers generally intend to do nothing more than the minimum necessary to get the money from the glib-and-lazy politicians who employ them. But for the first thing, they are themselves glib-and-lazy know-nothing fuck-ups skating through life on a frozen river of knowledge a mile wide and a micron thick.

Belay that testy comment, at least for a moment. I absolve myself of nothing in these charges. I know how ignorant I am. I know how much of the time that I could have spent acquiring an education was wasted on trivia instead, or on tendentious cant, or on outright lies. But the fault for that is no one’s but my own.

When our grandparents went to high school — if their families were prosperous enough for them to get that far in school — they were expected to conquer the maths through calculus. It was understood that they would master biology, chemistry and physics. Their curriculum demanded a thorough grounding in the arts, including the ability to play an instrument while sight-reading musical notation. To call themselves educated, to graduate, they had to attain fluency in a foreign language — very often classical Latin or Attic Greek.

To have graduated from high school in the United States in 1880 or 1910 was to have acquired an education far beyond that attained by all but the smallest few college graduates today. All hail the math gods, but how many of them can play a Beethoven sonata on the piano or violin? How many of that cohort can translate from Seneca? How many people reading this are not quite sure who Seneca was?

But: I don’t want you to feel bad about yourself. To the contrary, I want to show how to feel better about yourself — how to have more self to feel better about.

Yes, you were cheated of an education. And, yes, you were complicit in cheating yourself — with every daydream in class, with every gossipy note you passed, with every sneer, every snicker, every spitball you shot at a clueless teacher. With every half-assed, half-stepping, half-hearted effort you turned in, hoping it was just enough to get by — you cheated yourself of an education.

But that’s over. The past can’t be undone, but the future is yours to make of it what you will.

’Tis the season for New Year’s Resolutions, and that’s a good thing. Join that book club. Remodel that kitchen. Lose that unwanted weight. But you can make this a landmark year of your life with just one resolution:

Resolve to master something difficult this year.

There is no shame in knowing how to say, “¿Dónde está el baño?,” but you are fluent in a foreign language when you can read and admire its poetry, when you get the jokes, when you can twist that language into clever witticisms. That’s mastery.

We are victims of Art Appreciation and Film Studies classes, glib-and-lazy time-wasters in which we learned nothing but how to pretend to know something. But there is no class called Geometry Appreciation. In the maths, you can either do the work or you can’t. This year you can pick up where you left off in math and push yourself as far as you can go.

And tell the truth: Every time you see a musician performing — popular music or classical — don’t you wish you could do that, too? The good news is, you can. All it takes is commitment and effort — and time.

Mastering a demanding new skill will take a while. The desire for instant results is how all New Year’s Resolutions get abandoned. But to learn a serious discipline will require your time every day — an hour or more a day of serious, dedicated effort. I like the idea of working every day, since, if you take no breaks from the work, you won’t have to resist the temptation to extend a break by one day and then another and another.

But the benefits to be realized are huge — far beyond anything you might be expecting. In Art Appreciation class, everyone participates in the group discussions, there are no right or wrong answers and the class is graded on the curve. That is, everyone, including the teacher, is wasting time on a pantomime of education.

But mastery of a truly difficult discipline can only be done alone. Your teacher can help, and, as always, we stand on the shoulders of giants. But it is only your brain, working all alone, that can distinguish educere from educare in Latin. Only you working alone can solve that quadratic equation — and prove your work. Even if you’re playing in an ensemble, the music will jar unless you yourself are competent to play your part.

You’ll be better for having improved your mind. But your mind will be improved for having learned something you may have overlooked in school: Only an individual mind can learn and master any branch of human knowledge. You’ll be a better scientist, a better mathematician, a better musician, a better linguist. But you’ll be a better person, too — more independent, more competent, more whole.

How much progress can you make on any resolution in a single day? Almost none. How much progress can you make in a year’s worth of serious, daily effort? You’ll be amazed. It may take you more than a year to get the education your grandparents had by the age of eighteen. But, unlike them, you have instant access to all the world’s knowledge at your fingertips — most of it for free.

And once you’ve mastered something truly difficult, you can take a second look at those outrageously nefarious, blindingly brilliant, amazingly competent masterminds of evil and see them for what they truly are: Glib-and-lazy fuck-ups doing the minimum necessary to get by.

In Latin we can say, “Educere est educare” — to bring up is to bring out — to cultivate your mind is to liberate it, to lead it forevermore away from the slavery of ignorance. No matter what your pedigree, unless you were very lucky you were cheated of an education when you were young. This is the year you can begin to amend that deficit.

You’ll be better for the effort, and wiser, and more confident. But you’ll be more independent, too, more indomitable. And you’ll be more admirable — to your spouse, to your children, to your family and friends — and to yourself.

You weren’t just cheated of an education when you were young, you were cheated out of the full awareness of your own humanity. Not by outrageously nefarious bad guys, but by glib-and-lazy fuck-ups.

This year is your chance to break the chains of ignorance forever. And in the process, you just might find that you have also broken the imaginary chains that bind you to supposed masterminds of evil.

[I wrote this for FreeTheAnimal.com a couple of years ago, but I want to mirror it here, as well. –GSS]

We’re all sitting around today, plotting and planning our strategies for 2014…

Writing down goals. Looking over our numbers, canceling the crap that aint working and signing up for stuff that might…

For me, (ever since I read MREA back in 2004) the modus o has always been “If I get a shitload of traffic, and generate a shitload of leads, and set them all up for some kind of semi-automated follow up, I’ll make more money.”

Guessing a lot of the folks reading this agree, though some of us have bigger “balls” then others and are willing to spend a lot more on lead gen then we do on food…

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16400/how-are-you-getting-leads/feed/5Most Creative Loans We Funded in 2013http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16394/most-creative-loans-we-funded-in-2013/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16394/most-creative-loans-we-funded-in-2013/#commentsTue, 31 Dec 2013 02:08:08 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=163941- We funded a $900,000 Orange County purchase with just 6.5% down payment and no mortgage insurance

4- We funded a 7-unit San Diego apartment property, $820,000 purchase price with just 10% down and a 20% seller-carry back second mortgage.

5- We funded an “underwater” property with loan values at 135% of the appraised value in Los Angeles County.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16394/most-creative-loans-we-funded-in-2013/feed/3When I start a church, I’m going to call it The Second Church of I-Don’t-Go-To-Your-Church.http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16389/when-i-start-a-church-im-going-to-call-it-the-second-church-of-i-dont-go-to-your-church/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16389/when-i-start-a-church-im-going-to-call-it-the-second-church-of-i-dont-go-to-your-church/#commentsTue, 12 Nov 2013 17:18:05 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16389

How do you know when a time is right for your idea? How about when someone else comes up with something similar?: Atheist ‘mega-churches’ take root across USA, world. For the past three months, I’ve been thinking about starting a church evangelizing egoism and excluding no one, and here is the something similar. I’m reading this as a publicity stunt, but we’ll see. That’s definitely not what I’m about.

What I want is a mission devoted to the idea of doing better. Just that. The doctrine is mine, Man Alive, et very cetera, but I’m a lot more interested in praxis than dogma. If you cross a soul-enriching music performance with a mind-enflaming motivational seminar, you’re halfway to seeing what I see.

Picture a real live church service somewhere, once a week. My ideal location would be a big bar on late Saturday afternoons, to put the idea of choosing admirably in mind just when it might be needed most. That can be simulcast by Ustream or Spreecast, so the whole world can join in, one mind at a time.

But: I’m digging living on the road a lot, so I would love to take this show on the road 15 or 20 days a month, too: Full-day hotel meeting room seminars with a ton of rotating content and drawing on local talent as well. If you think about the way seminar mechanics do major-city blitzes — TV spots and infomercials leading up to the show in three or four locations on successive days — that’s the kind of road show I’d love to mount. An operation like that could produce one or two new hours of tight, professional video every day.

What does victory look like? How about an operation on the scale of the big boys, like Joyce Meyer or Joel Osteen? That may be too far to reach, but we are entering the age of Garage-Band Televangelism, so anything is possible.

The creed? On top of everything else, there are these two principles:

1. I don’t go to your church.

2. I am not arguing with you.

All I want to talk about is doing better, being better, becoming every day and step-by-tenuous-step a better person — in your own eyes. Whatever else you might believe is your business, and I don’t want to take it away from you. But if I won’t challenge your faith, I won’t spar about it either. If you came to fight, please go away.

I started thinking about this subsequent to a conversation with Anthony Johnson. He said to me, “You should start a church,” and even though I rejected the idea, it gnawed at me. I have a very low opinion of churches, and the bigger they get the less I like them. I made a joke about the sleaziness of televangelists when I sat down with Jim Pruitt, but the idea has been rolling around in my head for months.

The issue is this, discussed in Chapter 12 of Man Alive: Human beings worship. We can argue about the means and objects of worship, but it remains that we all do in fact worship in one way or another. And, as is argued in the book, the cardinal virtue of the fully-human life is the worship of the self by the self as the highest possible value in the uniquely-human life.

Does that idea need a church? I’m thinking it does. Certainly it hasn’t done well without one.

There’s more. I’m officiating Dream Johnson’s marriage in February, and I anticipate doing more weddings. I’ve not been asked to speak at a funeral, but I know I will be, and I deeply admire the style of eulogy Orson Scott Card invented for Speaker For The Dead. I think the baptism ceremony, minus the religion, is a beautiful commitment to the life of the child, and it also makes sense to celebrate a child’s graduation into Fathertongue, into free moral agency. A church is a community of like minds, and I like the idea of building a community of people who live by human values.

So: Am I daft? Or is this something you would like to see in your own life?

What’s in it for me? Judah Hoover asked me that question months ago, and I don’t have a great answer for him. It sure ain’t the money. If I wanted money, I’d mount a sales training or real estate investment show and make bank. But the reality of my life is, broke or flush, I eat off of plastic plates.

I am rich in ideas and indifferent to every other form of wealth. But I love the human mind, everything it can be, everything it has been, everything it will be. My goal is simply to take the ancient idea of self-adoration and plant it in richer soil, cultivating it to its full Splendor.

If that’s something you’d like to be involved in, say so. At the absolute minimum, your own life will be better, thus assuring you perfect success in your efforts at evangelizing egoism.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16389/when-i-start-a-church-im-going-to-call-it-the-second-church-of-i-dont-go-to-your-church/feed/2Rock Me Mama Egoism In Action: The link from art to human values and back.http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16387/rock-me-mama-egoism-in-action-the-link-from-art-to-human-values-and-back/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16387/rock-me-mama-egoism-in-action-the-link-from-art-to-human-values-and-back/#commentsTue, 03 Sep 2013 14:35:18 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16387Everything is all one thing, so this is a video essay about art about music about morality about song-writing about marriage about redemption – simple stuff. This is egoism in action, me being me.

An audio-only version is linked below, and that will show up also on iTunes in due course.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16387/rock-me-mama-egoism-in-action-the-link-from-art-to-human-values-and-back/feed/2Celebrating the father of our freedoms: The freedom to own real estatehttp://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/1615/celebrating-the-father-of-our-freedoms-the-freedom-to-own-real-estate/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/1615/celebrating-the-father-of-our-freedoms-the-freedom-to-own-real-estate/#commentsThu, 04 Jul 2013 13:25:12 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=1615Kicking this back to the top. Happy Independence Day! — GSS

Celebrating the father of our freedoms: The freedom to own real estate

By the time you read this, Independence Day will have passed, but I thought I’d give you one more reason to celebrate our freedoms: Real estate.

We call our culture Judeo-Christian, but we owe our laws and political institutions to the Greeks and the Romans. The Greek Hoplites, in particular, are the model upon which Western Civilization is based: Individual family farmers, freeholders in the land they farmed, who owned their own weapons of warfare and who banded together as a virtually unconquerable infantry when their lands were attacked.

What accounts for the independence of the Greeks? Was it their unprecedented military tactics? Was it their superior weaponry? Or was it the savage dedication of free men fighting for their own land?

The Hoplites fought against ragtag slave armies, engaging in combat only out of fear of the lash, never losing sight of the chance to dessert. But the Greeks fought to retain the rights they had wrested from despots, rights ordinary people, until then, had never known.

We derive many more treasures from the Romans, among them the story of Cincinnatus, the retired general called back to battle and given dictatorial power because the situation was so dire. Instead of abusing that power, Cincinnatus won the war, set down his arms and picked his plow where he had left it.

We honor the citizen-soldier in the conduct of George Washington, who could have declared himself king of America, but who instead, like Cincinnatus, surrendered his power and went back to his farm.

Politicians will tell us that we owe our freedoms to representative government. This is twice false. The interest we share in government is the land we each own individually, like the Hoplites. Moreover, representative government without free ownership of the land is tyranny in camouflage.

Americans are free because we have the uncontested right to buy, use, enjoy, rent, let and sell the land we live on. If you have any fire-crackers left over, you might light one for the freedom that is father to all the others: The freedom to own real estate.

If almost-as-good is free or nearly free, what is the market value of slightly-better?

Big changes in the world since then. Brick ’n’ mortar retail is all but dead. Books, records and software ‘apps’ are aiming for a price point under ninety-nine cents — many of them all the way under. The supermarket real estate magazines are gone, and the thinning out of the classifieds put the newspapers on a strict diet. Their putative replacements, realty.bots like Zooliapads.com, are by now just sleazoid lead vendors. Unwired Realtors are enjoying their retirements while we are doing business without a fax line or even a land line.

That much is cool. I’m less sanguine about the people in this business than I am about the business itself. One of the things I haven’t loved about real estate has been seeing some of the incredibly scummy things people will do. Most of my clients have been great, and I love all of the people I work with long-term. But I’ve fired people who have left shit on my shoes forever, and this is not a happy outcome for me.

BloodhoundBlog has been a similarly-mixed blessing. I’ve met some wonderful people through this blog, and we’ve published some remarkable content. But I’ve seen the howling mob at its worst, and every day I get to see sleazy SEOs working overtime to make me regret sharing link juice with commenters. And meanwhile, the vendorsluts and their raving wraiths have turned our part of the internet into just another Realtors’ brothel. Don’t get any on ya.

And I am off to Planet Elsewhere. I wanted to hit the road for a while in the first quarter, but my Mammy died and then Odysseus started looking all deathful. So here I am mounting the expedition in the third quarter instead. I’m going to be in Las Vegas for the last three weeks (three nundinae, actually, but who’s counting?) of July, and then I will be in Orlando for the last three nundinae of August. I’m interested in making plans for September, October and beyond if you would like to see me in your town.

Meanwhile, there is the question of what to do about BloodhoundBlog. I’m not writing here much, nor is anyone else. I think this is a valuable resource, especially when the entirety of the vendorslut mafia is howling as one mob. But it’s stoopid to have thirty mug shots staring at us from the sidebar and have all but none of them writing new content.

So I need for the dawgs to figure out what they want from this place. When I come back from Sin City, I’ll reconfigure the roster accordingly.

‘“From now on whenever you’re driving on the freeway look for a truss,” Swann said, referring to a roof truss on the back of a truck. “And when you start to see a truss every day, then things have turned around. If you see three trusses a day, then things have really turned around. But if you can go five days without seeing a truss on the freeway, then no one is building anything.”’

The linked story is from Peter O’Dowd, a journalist for whom I have huge respect — not alone because he listens when I talk about bug’s-eye-view real estate.

It’s a dread we’ve learned to live with. I wrote about this day in fiction a couple of months ago so I would have the choice not to write about the facts today. I can make death beautiful — big deal. Nothing can make death tolerable, nothing but time.

But: He died as he lived, game and eager, his face alight with love for everything. Cathleen was there to hold him and his favorite vet, Doctor Blackwell, was there to say goodbye and I was there to make fun of the most adorable big dumb doofus I ever knew and he left this life with a smile on his face.

One last time: “Lay down, Puppy. Go to sleep…”

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16358/bidding-farewell-to-brave-odysseus/feed/8Reason Magazine: “How established homeowners use regulations to stop new low-cost homes.”http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16351/reason-magazine-how-established-homeowners-use-regulations-to-stop-new-low-cost-homes/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16351/reason-magazine-how-established-homeowners-use-regulations-to-stop-new-low-cost-homes/#commentsTue, 07 May 2013 17:14:56 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16351It’s not mentioned in the Reason article, but the real curse of zoning is the prohibition of innovation. By forbidding all projects, land-use tyrants exclude not just the dreck but also the sheer genius. Some builder coud have come up with the modern equivalent of Wright’s Five-Thousand Dollar Home, but that guy works in software instead, where innovation is celebrated and rewarded.

When a news crew showed up to film a public meeting in tony Darien, Connecticut, in 2005, some of the residents were less than thrilled. “Why don’t you fucking shoot something else?” one demanded. Hundreds crammed into the hearing, sneering and jeering during the presentation.

The fresh hell residents showed up to protest? A proposal to replace a nondescript single-family home on a one-acre lot with 20 condos for senior citizens.

In Snob Zones, journalist Lisa Prevost describes the heights of entitlement to which property owners ascend when faced with the prospect of new development, especially multi-family dwellings in neighborhoods dominated by single-family homes. Prevost tours New England and finds an aging, declining populace bent on excluding outsiders. In town after town, affluent and working-class alike, residents line up to shout down new development no matter how modest.

In Darien, the need for the proposed project was clear; the town’s senior housing center had a long wait list, as did the last condo development built in the area (in 1994). Still, many townsfolk, expecting the project to open the floodgates to more high-density projects in the resolutely low-density burgh, were incensed.

Incumbent homeowners have a powerful weapon for vetoing change: zoning. In Darien and other exclusive zip codes, mandated minimum lot sizes kneecap developers who want to build something other than super-sized homes. In the process, they put entire towns out of reach for all but the wealthy. In hardscrabble Ossippee, New Hampshire, where it’s not uncommon for the working poor to live in tents during the summer months to save on rent, the zoning code flatly prohibits new apartment buildings.

Though Prevost, who covers the real estate beat for The New York Times, has no problem with the traditional justification for zoning (but for it, she believes, dirty industries might locate in residential neighborhoods), she has written as damning an indictment of zoning as any free marketeer could hope for. “The market is hungry for apartments, condominiums, and small homes,” says Prevost, “if only zoning restrictions would get out of the way.”

Where libertarians see an infringement on property rights, Prevost sees a problematic tradeoff between local demands for low density (tinged with fears that undesirables might move in next door) and regional needs for affordable housing. It amounts to the same thing, however: established residents using government force to kill the low-cost housing that would exist in a free market. In the words of the pioneering community planner (and ardent urban renewal opponent) Paul Davidoff, those who wield zoning laws “have not bought the land but instead have done the cheap and nasty thing of employing the police power to protect their own interest.” Nice.

Read the whole thing. Here’s a sweet joke for incentive:

In the words of one developer who switched to building cottage homes during the recession: “I used to say, we’re building homes for people who can’t afford them, with money they don’t have, to impress people they don’t know. You could just see it—it was stupid.”

The “silver lining” in our five-years-and-running Great Recession, we’re told, is that Americans have finally taken heed of their betters and are finally rejecting the empty allure of suburban space and returning to the urban core.

“We’ve reached the limits of suburban development,” HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan declared in 2010. “People are beginning to vote with their feet and come back to the central cities.” Ed Glaeser’s Triumph of the City and Alan Ehrenhalt’s The Great Inversion—widely praised and accepted by the highest echelons of academia, press, business, and government—have advanced much the same claim, and just last week a report on jobs during the downturn garnered headlines like “City Centers in U.S. Gain Share of Jobs as Suburbs Lose.”

There’s just one problem with this narrative: none of it is true. A funny thing happened on the way to the long-trumpeted triumph of the city: the suburbs not only survived but have begun to regain their allure as Americans have continued aspiring to single-family homes.

More:

While they’ve weaved a compelling narrative, the numbers make it clear that the retro-urbanists only chance of prevailing is a disaster, say if the dynamics associated with the Great Recession—a rise in renting, declining home ownership and plunging birthrates—become our new, ongoing normal. Left to their own devices, Americans will continue to make the “wrong” choices about how to live.

And in the end, it boils down to where people choose to live. Despite the dystopian portrays of suburbs, suburbanites seem to win the argument over place and geography, with far higher percentages rating their communities as “excellent” compared to urban core dwellers.

Today’s suburban families, it should be stressed, are hardly replicas of 1950s normality; as Stephanie Coontz has noted, that period was itself an anomaly. But however they are constituted—as blended families, ones headed up by single parents or gay couples—they still tend to congregate in these kinds of dispersed cities, or in the suburban hinterlands of traditional cities. Ultimately life style, affordability and preference seem to trump social views when people decide where they would like to live.

We already see these preferences establishing themselves, again, among Generation X and even millennials as some move, according to The New York Times,toward “hipsturbia,” with former Brooklynites migrating to places along the Hudson River. The Times, as could be expected, drew a picture of hipsters “re-creating urban core life” in the suburbs. While it may be seems incomprehensible to the paper’s Manhattan-centric world view by moving out, these new suburbanites are opting not to re-create the high-density city but to leave it for single-family homes, lawns, good schools, and spacious environments—things rarely available in places such as Brooklyn except to the very wealthiest. Like the original settlers of places like Levittown, they migrated to suburbia from the urban core as they get married, start families and otherwise find themselves staked in life. In an insightful critique, the New York Observerskewered the pretensions of these new suburbanites, pointing out that “despite their tattoos and gluten-free baked goods and their farm-to-table restaurants, they are following in the exact same footsteps as their forebears.”

So, rather than the “back to the cities” movement that’s been heralded for decades but never arrived, we’ve gone “back to the future,” as people age and arrive in America and opt for updated versions of the same lifestyle that have drawn previous generations to the much detested yet still-thriving peripheries of the metropolis.

It was just seven short years ago that the prices at the epicenter of the housing bubble, Los Angeles, CA rose by 50% every six months as the nation experienced its first parabolic move higher in home prices courtesy of Alan Greenspan’s disastrous policies: a time when everyone knew intuitively the housing market was in an epic bubble, yet which nobody wanted to pop because there was just too much fun to be had chasing the bouncing ball, not to mention money. Well, courtesy of the real-time real estate pricing trackers at Altos Research, we now know that the very worst of the housing bubble is not only back, but it is at levels not seen since the days when a house in the Inland Empire was only a faint glimmer of the prototype for BitCoin.

Urf.

A lot of the people I talk to in Phoenix are trying to time their exit. It wasn’t this way in 2005-2006; I had people still eager to buy ten months after the market had turned.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16346/zero-hedge-presenting-the-housing-bubble-2-0/feed/3The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the world’s first peripatetic computer: You walk, you work and you thrive.http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16321/the-samsung-galaxy-s4-is-the-worlds-first-peripatetic-computer-you-walk-you-work-and-you-thrive/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16321/the-samsung-galaxy-s4-is-the-worlds-first-peripatetic-computer-you-walk-you-work-and-you-thrive/#commentsMon, 29 Apr 2013 12:00:20 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16321

I was walking around the house Saturday — busily working away, headset in my ear, making phone calls and dealing with emails — when it hit me:

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the world’s first peripatetic computer.

It’s easy and natural to work — to do real work — while walking. Salesmaniacs know that you work better on the phone when you’re walking and talking, but that’s just one aspect of the the sheer utility of doing the desk work where the work is, instead of trying to disgarble the mangled reports of intermediaries.

Comprehensive reviews of the S4 abound, pick your poison. I’m Apple to the core since 1985, so this was a big move for me. I have zero doubt that all smartphones are rip-offs of Apple, that without the iPhone, cell phones would still look and disappoint like the the Nokias and Motorolas of yore. But Samsung is number two and it is trying harder than Apple is now — a lot harder.

The unique features of the phone are gee-whiz and boy-howdy both, doubt you nothing, but that’s all just geekery (and the whole Android universe is rife with the kind of self-satisfied jargonistic needlessly-arcane asshattery that made normal people shun Unix (Eunichs?) geeks even before they made DOS for the dumb ones). What makes the S4 work is the way it’s made for work.

Like this:

* Size: Nice in my hand, maybe just a touch big for the wimminz, but very pocketable, unlike the largely-comparable Galaxy Note 2. (Between the lines: Leaving the phone out of the iPad and iPad Mini was an unforced error on Apple’s part.)

* Weight: That plastic shell feels cheesy, but it makes the phone super-light. I can hold it stationary in one hand indefinitely, easily, without rest or stress. I sold my iPad 2 because the weight of the thing made it, de facto, a crippled laptop, not a usefully-mobile computing solution.

* Software: This is still the weakest link for true peripateticism, computing while ambulating, working while you walk, but we’re getting there. The whole “app” diversion has been a disaster, with millions of people possessed of dozens of one-off (cr)apps, each one of which is really just a showy database client. But because Google is (dimly, slowly) catching onto the idea that the essential component in computing is not the device, not the code and not the data but the end-user, device-irrelevant computing gets better and better. As it does, the amount of work you can get done wherever you are grows dramatically.

This is my notifications screen, with my TV remote always ready to hand. Note that the phone is aware that earbuds are plugged in. The software suggestions it makes are all useless, but at least it’s trying. Note to Google: Heuristics. You know how to do it.

* Hardware: Beyond cool, so go read those reviews. There’s built-in biometric stuff and — soup to nuts — an IR blaster. I have a remote for our TV “widgeted” into my lock screen. Best news of all: A user-accessible micro-SD slot. I have the 16GB phone, augmented by a 64GB memory card for, I kid you not, fifty-six bucks. I have 80 gigs of static ram on my phone!

* Camera: Better than my point-and-shoot — by a lot. The sharing support everywhere is first rate, but it’s easy to move photos or videos wherever you want them.

* Battery: It’s a slow charge for a long life, a good trade-off. Much better, the battery is user-swappable, so dedicated road warriors can keep a spare or two fully-charged.

But wait. There’s more.

Take a look at this docking station. Power, monitor, hard-disk, keyboard, mouse — desktop. The S4 and this dock are, as of now, the perfect solution for working a conference: The workstation stays at your seat as you, the phone and your headset work the breaks, then everything is back to a desktop/laptop-like solution when you sit back down.

Invite me to your show. I want to prove this will work beautifully!

I’ll have more to say about the S4 as I have more time with it. But so far it’s doing for me what my Macbook Pro, my iPhone and my erstwhile iPad could not do: Giving me a way to work when the only flat surface available to me is my left hand.

That’s a spoofed email — no links back to the mothership, and a big, fat executable at the bottom. I’m betting it’s WinPoison, so it probably won’t hurt my iMac, but I won’t be researching that question.

But: Be alert. Whether it’s spam, malware or a phishing line, nothing goes wrong until you make the mistake of clicking on the wrong file or link.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16318/the-end-times-are-upon-us-docusign-spam/feed/2Kotkin: “Why the next great American cities aren’t what you think.”http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16314/kotkin-why-the-next-great-american-cities-arent-what-you-think/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16314/kotkin-why-the-next-great-american-cities-arent-what-you-think/#commentsTue, 09 Apr 2013 17:21:44 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16314Joel Kotkin at The Daily Beast:

Once considered backwaters, these Sunbelt cities are quietly achieving a critical mass of well-educated residents. They are also becoming major magnets for immigrants. Over the past decade, the largest percentage growth in foreign-born population has occurred in sunbelt cities, led by Nashville, which has doubled its number of immigrants, as have Charlotte and Raleigh. During the first decade of the 21st century, Houston attracted the second-most new, foreign-born residents, some 400,000, of any American city—behind only much larger New York and slightly ahead of Dallas-Ft. Worth, but more than three times as many as Los Angeles. According to one recent Rice University study, Census data now shows that Houston has now surpassed New York as the country’s most racially and ethnically diverse metropolis.

Why are these people flocking to the aspirational cities, that lack the hip amenities, tourist draws, and cultural landmarks of the biggest American cities? People are still far more likely to buy a million dollar pied à terre in Manhattan than to do so in Oklahoma City. Like early-20th-century Polish peasants who came to work in Chicago’s factories or Russian immigrants, like my grandparents, who came to New York to labor in the rag trade, the appeal of today’s smaller cities is largely economic. The foreign born, along with generally younger educated workers, are canaries in the coal mine—singing loudest and most frequently in places that offer both employment and opportunities for upward mobility and a better life.

Over the decade, for example, Austin’s job base grew 28 percent, Raleigh’s by 21 percent, Houston by 20 percent, while Nashville, Atlanta, San Antonio, and Dallas-Ft. Worth saw job growth in the 14 percent range or better. In contrast, among all the legacy cities, only Seattle and Washington D.C.—the great economic parasite—have created jobs faster than the national average of roughly 5 percent. Most did far worse, with New York and Boston 20 percent below the norm; big urban regions including Philadelphia, Los Angeles, and, despite the current tech bubble, San Francisco have created essentially zero new jobs over the decade.

[….]

The reality is that most urban growth in our most dynamic, fastest-growing regions has included strong expansion of the suburban and even exurban fringe, along with a limited resurgence in their historically small inner cores. Economic growth, it turns out, allows for young hipsters to find amenable places before they enter their 30s, and affordable, more suburban environments nearby to start families.

This urbanizing process is shaped, in many ways, by the late development of these regions. In most aspirational cities, close-in neighborhoods often are dominated by single-family houses; it’s a mere 10 or 15 minute drive from nice, leafy streets in Ft. Worth, Charlotte, or Austin to the urban core. In these cities, families or individuals who want to live near the center can do without being forced to live in a tiny apartment.

And in many of these places, the historic underdevelopment in the central district, coupled with job growth, presents developers with economically viable options for higher-density housing as well. Houston presents the strongest example of this trend. Although nearly 60 percent of Houston’s growth over the decade has been more than 20 miles outside the core, the inner ring area encompassed within the loop around Interstate 610 has also been growing steadily, albeit at a markedly slower rate. This contrasts with many urban regions, where close-in areas just beyond downtowns have been actually losing population.

[….]

Pressed by local developers and planners, some aspirational cities spend heavily on urban transit, including light rail. To my mind, these efforts are largely quixotic, with transit accounting for five percent or less of all commuters in most systems. The Charlotte Area Transit System represents less a viable means of commuting for most residents than what could be called Manhattan infrastructure envy. Even urban-planning model Portland, now with five radial light rail lines and a population now growing largely at its fringes, carries a smaller portion of commuters on transit than before opening its first line in 1986.

But such pretentions, however ill-suited, have always been commonplace for ambitious and ascending cities, and are hardly a reason to discount their prospects. Urbanistas need to wake up, start recognizing what the future is really looking like and search for ways to make it work better. Under almost any imaginable scenario, we are unlikely to see the creation of regions with anything like the dynamic inner cores of successful legacy cities such as New York, Boston, Chicago or San Francisco. For better or worse, demographic and economic trends suggest our urban destiny lies increasingly with the likes of Houston, Charlotte, Dallas-Ft. Worth, Raleigh and even Phoenix.

The critical reason for this is likely to be missed by those who worship at the altar of density and contemporary planning dogma. These cities grow primarily because they do what cities were designed to do in the first place: help their residents achieve their aspirations—and that’s why they keep getting bigger and more consequential, in spite of the planners who keep ignoring or deploring their ascendance.

Read the whole thing. I’ve been pimping Kotkin here for years. When you see his name out on the nets, give him your time. He’s been dead right about what’s happening in American cities, where Richard Florida has been dead wrong.

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16314/kotkin-why-the-next-great-american-cities-arent-what-you-think/feed/1If the condominum is not VA-approved, how do I get a VA home loan offer accepted?http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16310/if-the-condominum-is-not-va-approved-how-do-i-get-a-va-home-loan-offer-accepted/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16310/if-the-condominum-is-not-va-approved-how-do-i-get-a-va-home-loan-offer-accepted/#commentsThu, 04 Apr 2013 21:00:47 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16310Many veterans in California purchase properties which are classified as condominiums. Some are large complexes, with professional HOA management, some are small complexes (under 6 units) with no monthly HOA fee and an informal cost-sharing agreement, and some are townhomes. All share on thing in common–they are listed on the county records as a condominium. This, the VA loan can not be funded until the condominium complex is approved.

The Southern California market has shifted, seemingly overnight from a buyer’s market to a seller’s market. Many listing agents are presenting multiple offers to sellers. Sadly, sellers leave some money on the table because the best offer is one using a VA home loan. The sellers believe that the VA home loan can not be used because the condominium complex does not have a VA approval.

Buyer’s agents jobs then, are to present the VA offer with an eye towards minimizing the risk associated with it.

First, the buyer’s agent would do well to present documentation which demonstrates that the veteran is a strong buyer. Some successful agents go so far to present my automated underwriting findings along with asset and income documentation (with the veteran’s permission, of course). Demonstrating that the veteran has the credit, income, and asset requirements, to be approved for the loan amount, shows that the veteran is “bankable”.

Second, the buyer’s agent might address the three common concerns, sellers have with VA loans in the cover letter. The cover letter should highlight that the veteran earnedthe no-down payment loan as compensation for his or her service to our country. I sometimes call this “wrapping the offer in the flag” and the buyer’s agent should not be shy about doing it. If the veteran served overseas, highlight it. If the veteran earned a distinctive award, highlight it.

The buyer’s agent should be clear about whether the seller is being asked to pay for the VA non-allowable costs and specify the dollar amount. If the offer does not include seller-paid costs, the letter should state who is paying for those costs (usually the lender) and reference the section in the offer which states that. I generally recommend that agents use this language

“VA non-allowable costs to be paid by lender. Seller not required to pay any of the veteran’s non-allowable closing costs”

The buyer’s agent should discuss the condominium approval process in the cover letter, too. The lender’s name, email, and number should be included, along with 2-3 references who can confirm that the lender knows how to get the complex VA-approved. This point is important. The lender should be able to demonstrate proficiency in the complex approval complex and should state that the appraisal can be ordered before the complex is approved. Not all lenders will do this. Many lenders state that the complex has to be approved prior to ordering the appraisal–that just ain’t so. The loan can be processed, underwritten, and approved before the complex approval comes in. Ultimately, the lender should have a full approval with one condition remaining; the complex approval.

Finally, the buyer’s agent should confidently present the VA Amendatory Clause with the offer. The VA Amendatory Clause is nothing to hide. Sellers should understand that the appraisal will be performed conditioned upon the complex approval. Ultimately, that means that the veteran buyer’s deposit is refundable if the complex can’t be approved. If the buyer is bearing the cost of the attorney opinion letter, that should be disclosed as well–it shows that the veterans has “skin in the game” and a vested interest in a quick closing.

VA home loans are a great tool for buyers who have served our country. Sellers can get top-dollar for their properties if they address the “risks” a VA offer might present, have a game plan for how to mitigate those risks, and help the agents, veteran, and lender to close the loan quickly. Communication is key to a successful VA home loan transaction and that communication starts with a prepared buyer’s agent.

My reaction? “Urf. Now I’m going to have to waste time mocking this nonsense…”

Okayfine. You will note that the robot seems to be suggesting that California Real Estate is something of a slot machine.

But at least your CAR member agent has his squarish mechanical head screwed on right.

And in a batteries-not-included world, your mechano-Realtor comes complete with two enormous D-cells, which must have added considerably to the postage.

The box didn’t provide a lot of insight into why one should choose a CAR-certified RealtorBot, but it was fun imagery:

Ultimately, though, it’s the test of the marketplace that matters. And a CAR-approved RealtorBot can panic mindlessly like no other.

Hey, CAR members: No tar, no feathers in California? This is your money I’m having such a good time with…

]]>http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16301/whats-big-dumb-sclerotic-and-panics-on-command-a-california-association-of-realtors-member-apparently/feed/7Apparently, insanity is buying the same house over and over again, even though you never qualify.http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16298/apparently-insanity-is-buying-the-same-house-over-an-over-again-even-though-you-never-qualify/
http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/16298/apparently-insanity-is-buying-the-same-house-over-an-over-again-even-though-you-never-qualify/#commentsWed, 03 Apr 2013 15:30:45 +0000http://www.bloodhoundrealty.com/BloodhoundBlog/?p=16298You just can’t make this shit up: Obama administration pushes banks to make home loans to people with weaker credit. Why not? It worked out so well the last time.

The Obama administration is engaged in a broad push to make more home loans available to people with weaker credit, an effort that officials say will help power the economic recovery but that skeptics say could open the door to the risky lending that caused the housing crash in the first place.

President Obama’s economic advisers and outside experts say the nation’s much-celebrated housing rebound is leaving too many people behind, including young people looking to buy their first homes and individuals with credit records weakened by the recession.

In response, administration officials say they are working to get banks to lend to a wider range of borrowers by taking advantage of taxpayer-backed programs — including those offered by the Federal Housing Administration — that insure home loans against default.

Housing officials are urging the Justice Department to provide assurances to banks, which have become increasingly cautious, that they will not face legal or financial recriminations if they make loans to riskier borrowers who meet government standards but later default.

Officials are also encouraging lenders to use more subjective judgment in determining whether to offer a loan and are seeking to make it easier for people who owe more than their properties are worth to refinance at today’s low interest rates, among other steps.

Obama pledged in his State of the Union address to do more to make sure more Americans can enjoy the benefits of the housing recovery, but critics say encouraging banks to lend as broadly as the administration hopes will sow the seeds of another housing disaster and endanger taxpayer dollars.

“If that were to come to pass, that would open the floodgates to highly excessive risk and would send us right back on the same path we were just trying to recover from,” said Ed Pinto, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former top executive at mortgage giant Fannie Mae.